6 People Who Took Selfies at Bafflingly Insane Moments

The selfie -- a picture taken of oneself staring directly into the camera, utterly oblivious to the world around you -- perfectly encapsulates our social-media-drunk society. Unsurprisingly, a trend based entirely on varying degrees of narcissism is occasionally taken way too far, with the results ranging from personally disastrous to just plain old sad.

#6. Teenage Girls Take Selfie While Handcuffed in Police Van

Two Australian teenage girls were cuffed and placed in the back of a police van after getting caught with a stolen car. The dastardly duo quickly pulled out a phone and commemorated the moment with an obligatory selfie, because they evidently have yet to encounter the phrases "permanent public record" and "job interview."

The girls posted the photo on Facebook with the captions "Hahahaha In The Back Of The Police Van. Beat You" and "Getting Chased On Foot," at which point we assume police drove to their respective houses and tased them both, because there is no statute of limitations on duckface.

#5. Woman Sits for Portrait in Front of a Towering Inferno

Over the summer, a building in the jam-packed city of Manila in the Philippines burst into flames, sending waves of lung-blackening smoke into the sky while firefighters desperately fought to control the blaze. While citizens in the vicinity scrambled about for safety, one woman thought it was the perfect time to pose for a picture. We've all been there before -- how often does shit get totally consumed by fire and we just can't seem to find a camera to save our lives?

She was rushed to the hospital and did not actually wind up going into labor, although when she does, we assume the student will pop cartoonishly out of some nearby bush or trash can to grab another selfie.

#3. Man Gets Hit by Car, Then Videos Himself While Lying in the Ambulance

#2. Criminals Can't Stop Incriminating Themselves With Selfies

In the small town of Halmstad, Sweden, two teenage girls robbed a local restaurant with a pair of kitchen knives. Luckily, they posed for a quick selfie in their bandit gear before the heist, which was of immense help to investigators when they looked at the girls' phones after police dogs traced the robbers back to their apartment.

gawker.comA good rule of thumb for crime is "try to avoid creating incriminating evidence for absolutely no reason."

In another case, CCTV footage captured a robber wearing a gray hoodie and blue elephant pajama pants. Police found a photo of one of the suspects wearing the exact same outfit in a set of selfies on his cellphone, because apparently those are the only pair of pants he owns.

Most recently, a mugger in San Antonio stole a man's wallet and iPhone after tricking the man into thinking he was going to sell him a new one. When the victim bought a new iPhone and downloaded all his old photos from Apple's cloud service, he discovered a series of selfies that the mugger had taken with the stolen phone, which police were able to use to arrest the shit out of him. Evidently his "robbin' gear" was a difficult outfit to pull together and he wanted some photos to reference for future lawbreaking escapades.